The pickers and sinewy olives in this painting all strain upward towards the hope of spiritual salvation. But six months after he completed it, Vincent Van Gogh walked out into a wheat field and shot himself.

Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles is one of Australia's most famous cultural acquisitions. When Mike Parr lay supine before it, streaked with his own blood, he offered a new way of looking at the act of painting.

As scientists make a renewed push for greater action on climate change, a new installation at the Australian Museum brings home the fragility of our world.

‘Everything is sharply defined; we can even count his freckles.’
Detail of Diane Arbus, Boy with a straw hat waiting to march in a pro-war parade, N.Y.C., 1967. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Australia August 8, 2016

Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori began painting in her 80s, and over ten years created an extraordinary body of work. Her paintings are more like music and dance – depicting the stories of the Kaiadilt people for the first time.

Cindy Sherman understands how people perform for the camera. Her art is a portrait of human vulnerability.

Why is Whistler’s mother one of the most persistently famous images in the world?
James McNeill Whistler, Arrangement in grey and black no. 1 (Portrait of the artist's mother) 1871. Image courtesy of the NGV.March 14, 2016

Whistler's Mother, which arrives in Melbourne on March 25, is one of the most famous portraits in the world. But James Whistler never wanted the sitter's identity known.

Casuarina trees were the perfect metaphor for Blumann’s life and the state of the world.
Detail from Elise Blumann, On the Swan, Nedlands, 1942, Oil on composition board, 55.6x66.4cm. University of Western Australia.February 21, 2016

Guy Grey-Smith's painting showcases the insistent rhythms of the indigenous vegetation and the rolling, flowing movements that take our eye meandering across the landscape and back towards the horizon.